Measured by its impact, Windows Vista was a failure on a grand scale, despite shipments in the hundreds of millions of copies. While it was the default operating system on new PCs, many consumers preferred Windows XP, because of Vista's substantial hardware requirements, performance issues, implementation of digital rights management, drastic user account control, and installation as well as licensing problems.

Microsoft reportedly began development on an operating system that would fix Vista's issues in 2007 and released in as Windows 7 in 2009. Windows 7 was widely considered to have been the operating system that saved Microsoft from a financial disaster caused by Vista and represented the operating system Vista should have been. Vista was aggressively phased out after the launch of Windows 7 and removed from retail in 2011.